The International One Ton Cup racing was created in 1898 and the participant yachts had to have a tonnage certificate of one ton at the most. Throughout history, the ruling system changed though the participant yachts were baptized as the One Ton class. In 1965 the first One Ton Cup in racing-cruising yachts was raced off Le Havre and consisted of a race on the open sea and two coastal regattas. Yachts, named One-tonners, were specifically designed for that event.

 

In 1967 the skipper and sailmaker Hans Beilken commissioned the yacht designer Richard (Dick) Carter to design a One Tonner - OPTIMIST - for G. Köhler, the first owner (1967-70). OPTIMIST was a development of the One Ton Cup winner TINA, previously designed by Carter and winner of the 1966 One Ton Cup. OPTIMIST was built by the German boatyard Abeking & Rasmussen and was ‘five inches longer on the waterline (than TINA), with a skeg added to the rudder for improved downwind sailing in rough weather’, as described by Carter. The design ‘delayed the stalling out of the rudder, making it more effective in extreme conditions’.

 

OPTIMIST, Carter’s third design, won the One Ton Cup in two consecutive years, 1967 and 1968, and came second in 1969, under Hans Beilken and his brother Bernd who were experienced in high intensity round-the-buoys dinghy sailing. 

 

In 1971 the IOR rule (International Offshore Rule) was introduced for the races on the open sea and the One-Tonners switched to IOR 27.5 feet. By then OPTIMIST had been sold to the Portuguese businessman and skipper Jorge Granger Pinto with whom she continued to win numerous trophies in the two following decades.

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|  AWARDS

1967  .  One Ton Cup, under the skipper Hans Beilken | 1st place

1968  .  One Ton Cup, under the skipper Hans Beilken | 1st place

1969  .  One Ton Cup, under the skipper Hans Beilken | 2nd place

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|  GALLERY   

| 1967 - 1969 ( One Ton Cup era )